Paul Wells is entirely correct with his ending to his piece (the pulled quote image)on the outpouring of response to the Carney Davos speech.

BUT in the rest of the piece he overdoes the “this is just a speech” theme with, for example, the aside that Tony Blair used to give a couple of good speeches a week. And further downplays by way of saying Trump was “less of a coherent argument” — damning with faint praise if I have ever seen it. And also overdoes how there is nothing truly new — notably Paul’s account is somewhat tone-deaf to the timing, context and pressing need, not to mention the rare eloquence of the speech. He does (almost reluctantly ?) concede that a great virtue of this speech is it delivers on the honesty it preaches, which — the rest is my injection — goes against the grain of our generally brain-dead politics that infantilizes the populace. But even that he treats as a kind of collateral virtue and almost ho-hum.

And, yes, it is frustrating when the great unwashed pick up on the least significant message — see the italicized sentence in Paul’s piece. And annoying when partisan gushing enters into it — see Paul valiantly warning folks that they have come to the wrong site if that is their mode. But that should not refract onto an assessment of the speech itself.

Anyway, we both have to watch this space (what has this speech triggered or accelerated and what will Canadian policy and practice look like beyond what we have been able to semi-publicly see with Carney’s approach to date? what rubber will actually hit the road? when and where will “principled pragmatism” continue to look more like either mollification of the US or pure realpolitik? — without being so jaded as to speak of this speech as if it were ( just to take an example that everyone will understand ) a performative Trudeau speech. And one does not have to leave critical thinking or wait-and-see scepticism at the door to recognize a historic and monumental speech when one sees it, where “monumental” means more than the reaction (which reaction Paul graciously does concede).

Paul is on the right track with “speeches are good for other things” (than immediate deliverables) but ultimately this is too obvious to be much of a concession.